January 27, 2015

Last night I watched the premiere of the new documentary film Night Will Fall.

This quote is from a description of the film:

Begin quote:

The HBO documentary “Night Will Fall” is a movie about the Holocaust, a movie about remembering the Holocaust and primarily, at least in formal terms, a movie about a movie. It may not do full justice to all these subjects in its tight 78 minutes, but it’s not a film you’re likely to forget.

The most wrenching sequences in “Night Will Fall” are the scenes it incorporates from “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” a movie begun under the auspices of the British government in 1945. Using film shot by Allied cameramen at camps including Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, and assembled by a team that included Alfred Hitchcock as a supervising director, “Factual Survey” was meant to be a historical document and a teaching tool; among the stated goals of the filmmakers was that it be shown to Germans to prove to them that the horrors of the camps were real.

End quote

Sorry to say, I did not like the film at all. It is obvious that an attempt was made to make an artistic film, but artwork is not appropriate in a DOCUMENTARY. One thing that irritated me to death was the frequent shots of the end of a film strip. Back in the old days, the end of a film reel used to show symbols. This technique was very much overdone in the film.

But there was one good thing about the film, which surprised me. The narrator does say that the Bergen-Belsen camp was voluntarily turned over to the British — it was not “liberated.” You can read about how the camp was taken over by the British on my website here.

Every story about Bergen-Belsen that you will ever read, and every story that you won’t read, will tell you that the British LIBERATED Bergen-Belsen, surprising the SS men who did not have a chance to escape. At least the film tells the truth about this important point.

Unfortunately, the documentary does not mention that Bergen-Belsen was an EXCHANGE camp, intended for Jews to be exchanged for Germans held by the Allies. It became a concentration camp only in the last six months that it was in existence.

The film starts off with scenes of northern Germany in the Spring of 1945. It is the 12th of April and two Germans are approaching the Allied lines. They are bringing a message to the British that there is a large concentration camp nearby where there is a typhus epidemic in progress; the Germans want a truce because they need help to stop the epidemic.

The narrator then says that he was “amazed that none of the British soldiers fired” on the Germans who had approached them, asking for a truce.

Then we learn that, when the British approached the camp, they saw “neat and tidy orchards and well stocked farms” according to the narrator of the film. There was a war going on, but the narrator of the film implies that the German people were not suffering at all.

As soon as the British soldiers entered the Belsen camp, they lined up the SS men and women who have stayed behind at the camp, taking their lives in their hands, to care for the sick prisoners. I previously blogged here about Herta Bothe, one of the SS women who stayed behind to help.

The SS men and women are immediately taken as Prisoners of War, including Josef Kramer, the Commandant of the camp who had met the British at the gate, offering his help.

Josef Kramer was arrested immediately and put in chains

SS men who stayed behind to help the British were forced to handle dead bodies without gloves

The German SS men, who had stayed behind at the camp, to help with the typhus epidemic in the camp, were forced to handle the dead bodies without gloves, as shown in the photo above.

The next thing that we see is a photo, which shows healthy prisoners, including a number of smiling children and a woman who is overweight.

One of the prisoners who was at Bergen-Belsen, when the camp was turned over to the British, was Anita Lasker Walfish, who was 19 years old at that time. She speaks in the film, but it is not mentioned that she was previously a prisoner at Auschwitz, where she played in the women’s orchestra.

30,000 corpses were found by the British at Bergen-Belsen

It is at this point in the film that it is mentioned that there are 30,000 dead prisoners in the Bergen-Belsen camp. It is not mentioned in the film that the British meticulously counted the dead bodes, so who came up with this number?

The British used a bulldozer to shove the bodies toward a trench at Bergen-Belsen

Curiously, the film footage of a British soldier shoving dead prisoners with a bulldozer is not shown in the documentary.

What really happened at Bergen-Belsen?

The following information is from a previous blog post that I did about Bergen-Belsen:

Begin quote:

Before surrendering Bergen-Belsen to the British on April 15, 1945, Heinrich Himmler had ordered about 7,000 people to be evacuated from the camp. The three train loads of prisoners, which left the camp between April 6 and April 11, were made up of prominent Dutch Jews, Hungarian Jews, Jewish prisoners from neutral countries and Jewish prisoners who held foreign passports. Himmler was hoping to use these prisoners to negotiate peace terms with the Allies.

In preparation for surrendering the camp, two German officers had been sent to a British outpost to explain that there were 9,000 sick prisoners at Bergen-Belsen and that there was no water after the electric pump had been hit in an Allied bombing attack. [There is no mention of the broken water pump in the Night Will Fall documentary.]

The Germans proposed that the British Army should occupy the camp immediately to keep the epidemics in the camp from spreading to the troops on both sides. In return, the Germans offered to surrender the bridges over the river Aller.

At first, the British rejected the German proposals, saying it was necessary that the British should occupy an area of ten kilometers around the camp in order to be sure of keeping their troops away from the epidemic, but eventually a compromise was reached and the British agreed.

On April 15, 1945, Bergen-Belsen was surrendered to British Officer Derrick Sington, who wrote about it in a small book called Belsen Uncovered which was published by Duckworth, London in 1946.

Of course, Himmler had not anticipated that the British would film the dead bodies in the camp and then show the film in movie theaters around the world without explaining that the prisoners had died of typhus. And he certainly didn’t expect that the staff members, who had voluntarily stayed behind in the camp, would be arrested, or that some of the Hungarian soldiers, who were assigned to help with the surrender of the camp, would be shot by the British.

When the film of Bergen-Belsen was shown in American theaters, it was naturally assumed that the prisoners had been deliberately starved to death or killed in a gas chamber, since the film made no mention of the typhus epidemic in the camp. Nor was it mentioned that the water pump at Bergen-Belsen had been hit by Allied bombs and fresh water had to be brought in by trucks.

When British soldiers were finally allowed, as agreed upon in the negotiations, to enter Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945, they at first saw nothing amiss, according to some of the liberators. Smiling, healthy prisoners came out to greet them and some of the 500 children in the camp cheered and waved to them. But as they advanced further into the camp, they were stunned by the sight of thousands of unburied naked bodies.

The horror was beyond human imagination. The sickening stench of the rotting corpses was so great that British soldiers later claimed that they could smell the camp from a distance of 10 miles, although they had not smelled the bodies when they first entered, according to eye-witness reports.

In the last months of the war, as the Russian army advanced westward, prisoners in the camps in Poland had been evacuated and ultimately 60,000 prisoners had been crowded into the Bergen-Belsen camp which did not have enough space for them. Some of those who were still alive at Bergen-Belsen were walking skeletons. There were a variety of diseases that were rampant in the camp.

The Germans claimed that they had been unable to fix the broken water pump which had been destroyed by Allied bombs, and many inmates were dying of thirst, even though the camp was near a creek which the camp Commandant claimed was not fit for drinking. The camp used cisterns for its water supply, but the water could not be accessed without the electric pump that had been hit in a bombing raid. The nearby Army garrison had arranged for drinking water to be brought to the camp by truck, but it had not been nearly enough.

The British promptly fixed the broken pump and provided water from the creek for the camp which had been without water for six days. Creek water? Is this why 13,000 prisoners allegedly died after the British took over?

End Quote

This photo is included in the documentary Night Will Fall

After the Belsen camp was turned over to the British, German civilians from the nearby towns were forced to remove the bodies of the 13,000 prisoners who died afterwards, while the survivors stood by and jeered at them. The photograph above shows a group of survivors in the background on the left, watching as German citizens were forced to handle the diseased bodies with their bare hands at gunpoint.

German homes in the nearby towns were taken by the British military and assigned to the surviving prisoners after the barracks in the camp were burned down. The German people in the area were on their own, trying to find some place to live after they were thrown out of their homes.

The documentary is not entirely about Bergen-Belsen. About mid way into the documentary, the story wanders off with a new topic — the Maidenek camp in Poland. Maidenek was the German name for Majdanek, a concentration camp in Poland, which had absolutely nothing to do with Bergen-Belsen.

The documentary Night Will Fall does not mention gas chambers, but gas chambers had to be included, so Maidenek was brought in instead.

We see photos of a warehouse full of hair, including a photo of braided hair which might have been taken at Auschwitz, not Majdanek. Then we see empty cans of Zyklon-B, the gas that was used to kill lice — and Jews.

Then we see photos of toys at Majdanek, followed by photos of sacks of human hair, along with photos of brushes and glasses. There are photos of suitcases and false teeth. What are we supposed to take from this: Was it wrong for the Germans to save everything that was brought to the camps by the prisoners?

Finally, we get to Auschwitz and we see Eva Moses Kor, who says that she got hot chocolate and cookies from the nice Russian soldiers who liberated Auschwitz.

Then it is on to Dachau. The word Dachau is spelled out, not spoken. That’s O.K. — I can’t say the word Dachau either. I thought that this was a nice touch — spelling the word instead of saying it.

At this point, we learn that 10,615 prisoners were DISPOSED OF at Dachau. I don’t know what that means.

The worst part of the documentary Night Will Fall was the section about Dachau: Negatives of the film were shown. This was a way to disguise the fact that the scenes at Dachau were not nearly as bad as the scenes at Bergen-Belsen.

We hear Dr. Isaac Levy speak in the film, as he says that there were 40,000 prisoners still alive at Bergen-Belsen — and 35,000 corpses. Who counted the corpses?

Then the documentary shows a few photos of Dachau, including the clothes that were hung up outside the disinfection chambers. We see the death train, as we are told that the prisoners “were left to die.” We are told that there were 17 prisoners who were still alive on the train, along with 3,000 dead prisoners. We are told that “the Germans knew about Dachau, but they did not care.”

We are told that Hitchcock wanted to show the world how close the Germans lived to the camps. At this point, we are told that German civilians lived very near the Ebensee camp, which was in a resort area. The implication is that the German people were enjoying themselves at a resort in Austria while the people were suffering in the concentration camps. Ebensee was an “end destination” for the prisoners who were marched out of the Mauthausen camp for their own safety, as the war was going on around them..

At the end of the film, we learn that “thousands were murdered just before the liberation of the camps”. We see the German people, who were marched for 5 miles at gun point, up a hill, to see the dead bodies at the Buchenwald camp. We see a close-up of the dead bodies, but there is no mention of typhus in the camp.

Throughout the film, there is no hint that the Allies committed any war crimes during World War II.

I am answering a comment, made by The Black Rabbit of Inlé, with this new blog post. The Black Rabbit stated that “The Germans blew up the crematoria [at Majdanek] for a very good reason”

The Black Rabbit included a link to a video which features Vincent Reynouard telling us his opinion about why the Germans blew up the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau before the Soviet liberators arrived.

In the first part of the video, Reynouard talks about the Majdanek camp, which was liberated by the Soviets in July 1944. He does not mention that Polish prisoners were brought to Majdanek from the Gestapo prison in an old castle on a hill in Lublin and killed in front of the ovens, before the crematory building was burned.

Prisoners were brought from the Castle in the city of Lublin to the Majdanek camp and allegedly killed in front of the ovens

Polish tourists were brought to the Majdanek crematorium

The battle for the liberation of the Majdanek camp took place during two days of intense fighting. During this time, prisoners held in the Castle on a hill in the city of Lublin were allegedly brought by the Germans to the Majdanek camp and killed in front of the ovens.

Sorry, but I don’t believe that the Germans killed the prisoners in front of the ovens and burned the crematoria building to cover their crime. This just doesn’t make sense; why not just shoot the prisoners at the Castle, and leave the bodies there.

I believe that the Soviet liberators killed the prisoners in the Castle because they were Polish traitors, then brought their bodies to the crematorium and set fire to the crematorium, in order to blame the Germans for their deaths.

The important point in the video, which features Vincent Reynouard, is that he believes that the Germans destroyed the three crematoria at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, before the Soviet liberators arrived, in order to destroy evidence. I believe that it was the Soviets who destroyed evidence at Auschwitz-Birkenau before they officially liberated the 3 Auschwitz camps and then blamed the Germans for destroying evidence.

Sorry, but I believe that the Soviet liberators of Auschwitz came to the Birkenau camp and destroyed the three crematoria buildings, then returned a few days later and liberated the camp, claiming that the Germans had destroyed the evidence of the gas chambers.

The video of Vince Reynouard shows him climbing down into the ruins of the alleged gas chambers. It also shows lots of photos of the ruins, as he looks for the holes used for putting the gas pellets into the gas chambers. I had a hard time finding these holes myself, and I came to the conclusion that there were no holes in the roof to input gas pellets.

The young woman in the center of the photo above is a Communist political prisoner named Olga. This is a still shot from the Soviet movie, which is shown to tourists at the Auschwitz Museum in the main camp. Note the badge worn by the elderly woman, which indicates that she is a political prisoner, aka an illegal combatant.

The liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 was the most important event that ever happened in the entire history of the world, so it is important to correctly identify the liberators.

A recent news article, which you can read in full here, claims that it was Ukrainians, not Russians, who liberated Auschwitz. The photo above was taken in February 1945 because the liberating soldiers did not have cameras with them. The liberation had to be re-enacted.

Here is the real story of the liberation of Auschwitz:

On January 18, 1945, the three Auschwitz camps, called Auschwitz I, II and III, and the 40 satellite camps had been abandoned by the German Nazis. The prisoners, who chose to leave with the Germans, were marched out of the camp.

The gassing of the Jews at Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, had stopped at the end of October 1944. The evacuation of the Birkenau survivors to other concentration camps in the West had already begun in early October.

Anne Frank and her sister Margo were on one of the first transports out of Auschwitz, which took them to Bergen-Belsen, where they both died of typhus.

Aerial photos taken by the Allies showed that the roofs of crematoria buildings Krema II and Krema III and Krema IV at Birkenau had been removed in November 1944, so that the cremation ovens could be lifted out with cranes and transported to Germany.

Unfortunately, the four gas chambers in the Birkenau camp had not been destroyed by the Germans at the same time that the cremation ovens were lifted out of these building.

Ruins, allegedly found by the Soviets on Jan. 27, 1945, were photographed in Feb. 1945

My photo of the ruins of Krema II at Birkenau taken in 2005

Many people believe that Soviet soldiers really arrived shortly after the Germans left with some the prisoners on the “death march” out of the camp, and that the crematory buildings (Krema II, Krema III, and Krema IV) were actually destroyed by the Soviet soldiers before they officially liberated the camp.

Fortunately, Krema I in the main camp had been converted into a bomb shelter by the Germans, and it was not destroyed by the liberators. The bomb shelter was later converted into a gas chamber, which is still shown to tourists.

For many years, it was claimed that the so-called gas chamber in the main camp was original, but now it is admitted that it is a “reconstruction.”

Re-enactment of child survivors marching out of Auschwitz-Birkeau

Another still photo from the movie taken at the re-enactment of the liberation of Auschwitz

Note the little girl on the far left in the front row in the first photo above. She is on the left in the front row of the second photo above, which is also a still shot taken from the documentary film made by the Soviet Union in February, after they had liberated the camp.

The first photo shows a few of the 611 children at Birkenau, who greeted the liberators. They are holding out their arms to show their tattoos. Notice that the boy in the front is wearing a prison uniform which looks as though it would fit an adult.

This same film clip is included in a film entitled “The Nazis: Nazi War Crimes,” produced by the Soviet Union in which it was claimed that this same film clip was shot by the Nazis just before these children were killed at Babi Yar, a ravine near Kiev in the Ukraine.

Photo of the ruins of one of the Birkenau gas chambers was taken by the Soviets in Feb. 1945

So now that we know that the Soviets were not above telling lies about Babi Yar, I am inclined to believe that it was the Soviets who blew up the gas chambers at Birkenau before their official “liberation” of the camp on January 27, 1945.

The photo above shows the ruins of one of the gas chambers. How did the Soviets know that the ruins, shown in the photo, are the ruins of a gas chamber?

Why were there so many child survivors of Auschwitz, which are shown in the Soviet film of the re-enactment of the liberation? Apparently, the Soviet soldiers did not know that children under the age of 15 were gassed at Auschwitz. There were 611 children still alive when the Soviet liberators arrived.

You can read a news article here about the American delegation that will attend the ceremonies at Auschwitz during the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by Soviet troops.

This quote is from the news article about the American delegation that is going to Auschwitz:

President Obama announced on Saturday the delegation that would represent the United States at the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau later this month.

The anniversary, on Jan. 27, celebrates the liberation of perhaps the most notorious concentration camp during the Holocaust.

The delegation will be led by Secretary of Treasury Jacob Lew and will include two individuals who survived the camp. Israel Arbeiter and Irene Weiss, who were held at the camp years ago, will travel to Poland for the event, as will David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee.

Also making the trip will be U.S. Ambassador to Poland Stephen Mull, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Crystal Nix-Hines, and representatives from the Departments of State, Health and Human Services and the National Security Council.

The page on my website about the gassing of the Hungarian Jews, starts out with this quote:

It was not until May 1944, when the Hungarian Jews were deported, that Auschwitz-Birkenau became the site of the largest mass murder in modern history and the epicenter of the Final Solution. In 1942, there were 2.7 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, including 1.6 million at the Operation Reinhard camps, but only 200,000 Jews were gassed at Auschwitz that year in two old converted farm houses. This information is from the book “Auschwitz, a New History” by Laurence Rees, published in 2005.

Almost one half of all the Jews that were killed at Auschwitz were Hungarian Jews who were gassed within a period of 10 weeks in 1944. Up until the Spring of 1944, it had been the three Operation Reinhard camps at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor, that were the main Nazi killing centers for the Jews, not Auschwitz.

Obama has made many mistakes in the past, when talking about the Holocaust. I think that he has made another mistake in sending Irene Weiss to represent America at Auschwitz.

Irene was 13 years old when she arrived at Auschwitz. Everyone knows that children under the age of 15 were immediately sent to the gas chamber, so how did Irene manage to escape the gas chamber?

Hungarian Jews face the Sauna as they wait for their turn in the gas chamber

The “Sauna” was the building where incoming Jews took a shower at Auschwitz. But the Jews in the photo above are waiting for their turn in one of the 4 gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

This quote is from my website:

Irene Weiss has identified the two little boys on the left [in the photo above] as her two brothers, who were gassed. She used a magnifying glass to identify the woman behind them as her mother. Irene is not in the photo; she was not selected for the gas chamber, although it was the custom for the Nazis to send everyone under the age of 15 to be gassed. I’m guessing that she got by on her looks.

The photo above shows the Jews looking toward the Sauna, where there was a shower room. The closest gas chambers were behind them. I previously blogged about the Jews walking, on the same road, to the gas chambers and to the Sauna.

There are very few survivors of Auschwitz that are still living. Most of them were children, under the age of 15, when they were prisoners in the camp. Each of them has a story to tell about why they weren’t gassed.

The photograph above shows some of the 5,800 Birkenau survivors, most of whom look like well-fed Polish peasants, walking out of the camp shortly after Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. In the background you can see the wooden barracks buildings, with windows under the roof, and the posts of the barbed wire fence. These survivors are walking along the interior camp road that bisects the Birkenau camp from north to south, connecting the women’s camp with the new section of Birkenau, known as “Mexico.” This is a still picture taken from the Soviet movie which is shown at the beginning of the tour at the Auschwitz Museum.

The tall, skinny guy wearing an arm band is Dr. Otto Wolken, a medical doctor in the Birkenau Quarantine camp, who stayed behind to help his fellow prisoners when the Birkenau camp was evacuated. He was the first witness to testify at the Auschwitz Trial, held by the German government in Frankfurt between 1963 and 1965.

Excuse me, but I don’t think that this photo is suitable to illustrate the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Surely, there are better photos which could illustrate how the prisoners at Auschwitz were humiliated, beaten, starved, and gassed to death.

This quote is from the article, written by the late Joseph P. Bellinger:

Begin quote:

International Thought Crime

Israel may have assumed the lead in enacting Holocaust denial legislation when the nation enacted a “Global Holocaust Deniers” bill in the Knesset on July 20, 2004. This unprecedented law outlawed “Holocaust denial” even if committed overseas or outside of Israeli territory and was passed by unanimous vote. In theory, the law would enable the state of Israel to demand the extradition of any individual overseas for “Holocaust denial.”

The bill was drafted by Knesset member Aryeh Eldad of the National Union party as a counterthrust against former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas for a doctoral dissertation he had authored twenty years prior in which he estimated that less than one million Jews had perished at the hands of the Nazis.10

In effect, the bill provides for any Holocaust denier to be prosecuted in Israel. Eldad has reasoned, “What I want is that if a Holocaust denier publishes a book in England, he will be considered a criminal in Israel.” Apparently there will be no amnesty for such deniers even if they should change their opinions. “Once a denier, always a denier.”11

Justice Minister Tommy Lapid seconded that denying the Holocaust “is a neo-Nazi crime. Anyone involved in this belongs to the group of criminals whom our arm must reach anywhere in the world…We will not hunt them, but they should know that they are on our list of criminals. I am very satisfied and happy that this will be entering our law books.”12

End quote

Is there some International law, that I don’t know about, which gives the country of Israel the right to decide what is truth and what is fiction?

Is there anything else in the entire history of the world, except the Holocaust, that citizens in any country in the world are forbidden, by Israel, to dispute?

When I first started blogging in Feburary 2005, one of my very first blog posts was about Francska Mann, the beautiful woman who shot an SS man inside the undressing room for Krema II (crematorium number 2) at Auschwitz-Birkenau:

Today, I read another account of the Franceska Mann story, given by Holocaust survivor David Wisnia, which you can read in full in a news article here.

This quote is from the news article:

[David] Wisnia was sorting clothes on Oct. 23, 1943, when he witnessed the unthinkable – the deadly revolt at Crematorium 4.

[Krema IV was actually blown up by some of the Auschwitz inmates on Oct. 7, 1944.]

A group of prisoners, including the Polish Jewish dancer Franceska Mann, were taken into a room [the undressing room] next to a gas chamber and ordered to strip.

Mann apparently grabbed the roll-call officer’s pistol, fatally wounding him in the stomach, according to some accounts. She also reportedly fired a shot that wounded an SS sergeant. A revolt by the other prisoners was broken up when guards mowed them down with machine guns.

As the months passed and artillery began to sound in the distance, the Nazis began moving the prisoners in what Wisnia called the “death march.” In December 1944, they walked to Gleiwitz, Poland, to board a train to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

Gleiwitz was in Germany at that time and there was a sub-camp of Auschwitz there in 1945.

Davis Wisnia was working in the clothing warehouse, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was called Canada because of all the riches to be found there.

According to his story, Wisnia was going through the pockets in the clothing, collecting money for the Nazis. The Canada warehouse was not close to Krema II where Franceska Mann shot an SS man, nor was the Canada warehouse close to Krema IV.

Wisnia’s memory seems to be failing, but that’s O.K. I can’t remember everything either; I have to look up dates and other details.

January 18, 2015

When I visited Auschwitz for the first time, in September 1998, my professional tour guide took me on a half day tour of the main camp, and then suggested that I go to see the famous salt mines that afternoon.

The last thing that I wanted to see, famous or not, was the salt mines. So I hired a private guide to take me to see the Auschwitz II camp, aka Auschwitz-Birkenau. We were the only people there, besides the lone woman who greeted us at the gate.

This morning I read a news article here, which describes how tour companies still advertise a day trip to Auschwitz, along with a trip to the famous salt mines in the afternoon.

This quote is from the news article:

As the Holocaust slips out of living memory into the history books, time is apparently blunting the realities of the gas chambers so much that it is possible for some visitors to contemplate passing straight from shedding a few tears at the camp to marvelling at dwarves carved from rock salt.

It is clear that the visitors are going straight from the reconstructed gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp to the salt mine. They are electing not to see the ruins of the four homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

But the main message in this news article is that the Auschwitz memorial site is now concentrating on the evil Nazi perpetrators, and not so much on displays of toothbrushes and other items that the victims brought with them to the camp.

My 1998 photo of the suitcases displayed at Auschwitz

My 1998 photo of the shoes displayed at Auschwitz

This quote is from the news article:

Better protected relics will be part of the new exhibition, along with an exploration of the only aspect of Auschwitz’s gruesome history the museum has ignored until now. “The current exhibition has one great fault: it almost entirely leaves out the perpetrators,” said [Piotr] Cywinski, bemoaning the absence of details about the men who built and ran the camp.

He has been told by some survivors that the exhibition’s creators did not want to be reminded of their tormentors and by others that they only want to remember the victims. But for visitors today trying to grasp how the horrors of Auschwitz unfolded, it is a gaping hole. “How was it possible that normal people, fathers of families, started murdering people on an industrial scale? This question cannot be put aside,” said [Piotr] Cywinski.

Rudolf Hoess the Commandant of Auschwitz

It is hard to understand how a nice looking man like Rudolf Hoess, shown in the photo above, could murder Jews on an industrial scale, but today’s tourists must be told that he did.

Three evil SS men who were responsible for murdering 1.1 million people at Auschwitz

This final quote is from the news article:

With an office looking out on a gas chamber, [Piotr] Cywinski is constantly reminded of why he has chosen such a difficult job. “We throw accusations against people who were bystanders, who did nothing at that time, and then how do we look in the light of that period?” he asks. “When we look at genocide or tragedy or famine or totalitarian regimes, our silence today is indefensible. And we know how it ends, what is the outcome for the victims, because Europe went through that history 70 years ago.

Brick building behind the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp

The office of Piotr Cywinksi is probably located in the brick building behind the gas chamber in the main camp, which is shown on the far left in the photo. The gas chamber was on level ground, but had dirt piled over it to keep the bodies cool until they could be burned.

Wait a minute! What am I saying? Of course this building, with the dirt piled up over it, was not a morgue where bodies had to be kept cool. No, this is the original GAS CHAMBER in the Auschwitz main camp, which is now admitted to have been a reconstruction, done by the Soviet liberators of Auschwitz.

Photo, now owned by Getty Images, shows Red Army troops liberating the prisoners in the main Auschwitz camp

The photo above shows prisoners in the main Auschwitz camp being liberated by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945. At this time, the gas chamber in the main camp had been converted into a bomb shelter. The Soviets lost no time in converting the building into a gas chamber for tourists to see, and the rest is history.

I was alerted, by a reader of my blog, to the fact that Wikipedia does not mention a gas chamber at the Dachau concentration camp. I checked it out and found out that it is true — no mention of a gas chamber at Dachau.

Of course, there was a gas chamber at Dachau! How many people have served 5 or more years in prison for denying that there was a gas chamber at Dachau?

I find it very strange that Wikipedia leaves out the gas chamber at Dachau because there was not just one gas chamber at Dachau but four gas chambers that used Zyklon-B, a poison gas.

When American troops arrived at Dachau, they were shown the four gas chambers at the end of the Barracks-X building, which were used for disinfecting the clothes to kill the lice that spread typhus.

An American soldier stands beside the door into a gas chamber at the Dachau concentration camp

Notice the sign on the door, which says “Gaszeit” and the skull and crossbones with the word “Gas” under it.

The official Army report mentioned the “gas chamber” found by American soldiers at Dachau in April 1945.

My 2007 photo of the same gas chamber door that is shown in the previous photo of the Dachau gas chamber

On the right in the photo above, taken in May 2007, is the same door that is shown in the 1945 photo above. This door, which opens into a disinfection chamber, shown in the center of the photo, has been bolted to another door. On the left is another door into one of the four disinfection chambers at Dachau. A sign above the door on the left tells visitors that these are disinfection chambers where the clothing of the prisoners was disinfected to kill the lice that spreads typhus.

After Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945, the official report of the US Seventh Army was printed as a book entitled Dachau Liberated: The Official Report by The U.S. Seventh Army, Released Within Days of the Camp’s Liberation by Elements of the 42nd and 45th Divisions.

The Official Report was based on two days of interviewing 20 political prisoners at Dachau; the prisoners told the Americans that both the shower room in the Baracke X building, and the four disinfection chambers were used as homicidal gas chambers.

The following quote is from The Official Report:

“When the American troops arrived on 29 April 1945, there were approximately 32,500 estimated internees of all nationalities, the Poles predominating. During this period, the camp was notorious for its cruelty, but within the last six or eight months, some ‘token’ improvement was noted in the treatment of the internees. However, the new crematorium was completed in May 1944, and the gas chambers, a total of five, were used for the executions and the disposals of the bodies.”

The Baracke X building and the five gas chambers were actually completed in May 1943.

American soldiers examine clothing that was disinfected at Dachau

The American soldiers, shown in the photo above, had never heard of using poison gas to kill lice. At that time, America was using DDT for this purpose. Typhus had been completely wiped out in America and most of these soldiers had never heard of it; they didn’t know that typhus is a contagious disease spread by body lice.

They saw the word “gas” written on the 4 disinfection chamber doors, and assumed that these were the infamous gas chambers used for killing the Jews. They saw the deloused clothing hung up and assumed that the prisoners had been forced to undress and hang their clothing on a hanger before entering the disinfection chambers to be killed. It had been common knowledge throughout the world since June 1942 that the Nazis were murdering millions of Jews in gas chambers.

My 2007 photo of sign above a disinfection chamber at the Dachau Memorial Site

In spite of the fact that the sign above this disinfection chamber clearly states that it was one of the “Fumigation cubicles,” tour guides tell tourists that Jews were herded into these chambers to be killed by gassing.

When I went to Journalism School, back in the Dark Ages, we were taught “false in one, false in all.” In other words, one mistake and your readers won’t believe anything you say. That’s why Wikipedia should mention the “gas chambers” at Dachau.

January 14, 2015

Every day, I check my blog stats to see what search terms have led visitors to my blog. This tells me what subjects people are interested in reading about. The favorite search term is “gas chambers.” I have written many blog posts about the Nazi gas chambers, a subject that people can’t seem to get enough of.

Today, I noticed that someone searched for information on bringing flowers to Auschwitz.

Here is the short answer: If you want to place flowers at the Black Wall in the main camp, you can buy them from a flower shop located there. There is also a book store, at the main camp, where you can choose from a wide selection of books and postcards.

Tourists may place flowers at the “black wall” at the Auschwitz main camp

International monument at Auschwitz-Birkenau is a favorite place for flowers

The flower shop at the Auschwitz main camp is a lucrative business, so there might be a rule that you can’t pick flowers on the roadside and bring them into the camp. There are now 1.5 million visitors to Auschwitz, so that would mean a lot of flowers being brought in by tourists.

Flowers purchased in the Auschwitz main camp were placed on the monument at Birkenau in 2005

The last time that I visited Auschwitz was in 2005. I walked from “the gate of death” at Auschwitz-Birkenau, all the way to the International Monument at the end of the road. It was early in the morning, and I was virtually the only tourist there. I wanted to take some photos before the crowds arrived.

When I got to the International Monument, I was horrified to see that the clean-up crew had removed most of the flowers and the votive candles, placed there only the day before. I suppose that this is necessary because each day a new crowd of tourists arrives to place more flowers and candles. With over 1.5 million tourists visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2014, there must have been a lot of flowers left there.

On my visit to the Birkenau camp in 2005, there was no place there to eat. I am not sure if that has changed. The book store had a few candy bars and one could buy a very small cup of coffee or hot chocolate from a vending machine, but that’s all. I had to schedule my time each day so that I could always eat lunch at the main camp.

In 2005, there was a small snack stand near the entrance to the parking lot at the main camp where tourists could buy a “hot dog.”

Inside the Visitor’s Center at the main camp in 2005, there was a snack bar where one could buy cookies, peanuts, cokes, candy bars, pizza, etc. There were tables and chairs nearby where people could eat. Across the street from the Visitor’s Center, there was a Polish restaurant.

The tour groups do not visit some areas of the Birkenau camp, so I was all alone for some time there in 2005. Fortunately, nothing bad happened to me, and I had no problem finding everything on my own, with the aid of a map which I purchased from a taxi driver on the way there.

On my second day there in October 2005, I first went to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. I got there at 8 a.m. and went immediately to the barracks buildings which I had not been able to see the day before because of the crowds of people.

There were two British photographers there, taking some serious pictures for a documentary. I pointed out some interesting features in the barracks to them, which they didn’t know about.

The photos below were taken by me in 2005 at the Quarantine camp, inside Auschwitz-Birkenau, near the entrance through the famous “gate of death.”

The Quarantine camp at Auschwitz-Birkeanu camp near the entrance

Inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau barracks near the entrance into the camp

A sign inside an Auschwitz-Birkenau barrack building

My 2005 photo of flowers inside a barracks building at Auschwitz-Birkenau

From the Quarantine camp at the entrance to the Birkenau camp, I walked all the way to the end of the camp, where the International Monument is located.

As I walked along the road, a small cart, that looked something like a golf cart, passed me. There were four women riding in the cart, stopping frequently to pick up the garbage that had been left by visitors the day before.

I thought about asking these women for a ride to the end of the camp, which is about a mile from the entrance, but I didn’t. It occurred to me that the camp should provide carts for older visitors. A trip around the whole Birkenau camp is about 4 miles.

To sum up, bring flowers to Birkenau if you must, but in my humble opinion, this would be a waste of time and money.